Response to Webster

Reponse to Webster's claims about my work on
concealed handgun laws:

1) Omitted
Variables and Failure to Control for Crime Cycles

"Despite claims to the contrary, the regressions
do control for national and state crime trends in several different
ways. At the national level, I use a separate variable for each year,
a technique that allows me to account for the changes in average
national crime rates from one year to another. Any national cycles in
crime rates should be accounted for by this method. At the state
level, some of the estimates use a separate time trend for each
state, and the results with this method generally yielded even larger
drops in violent-crime rates associated with nondiscretionary (shall
issue) laws.

"To illustrate that the results are not merely due
to the ´normal' ups and downs for crime, we can look again at
the diagrams in chapter 4 showing crime patterns before and after the
adoption of the nondiscretionary laws. The declines not only begin
right when the concealed-handgun laws pass, but the crime rates end
up well below their levels prior to the law. Even if laws to combat
crime are passed when crime is rising, why would one believe that
they happened to be passed right at the peak of any crime
cycle?"

- John Lott, MORE GUNS, LESS CRIME, pp.
130-131

Despite Webster's claims, my work has accounted
for poverty as well as several different measures of income. I also
accounted for "adaptions in the criminal justice system to rising
crime" by controlling for arrest rates, conviction rates, and prison
sentence lengths. I have also used information on police officers and
other law enforcement employees per capita.

2)
Erroneous
Assumptions

Webster cites Black & Nagin as claiming that
my work allegedly assumes "(1) an immediate and constant effect of
RTC laws; and (2) similar law effects across different states." My
book replies to this also:

"One of the central arguments both in the original
paper and in this book is that the size of the deterrent effect is
related to the number of permits issued, and it takes many years
before states reach their long-run level of permits. Again, the
figures in chapter 4 illustrate this quite clearly.

"I did not expect the number of permits to change
equally across either counties or states. A major reason for the
larger effect on crime in the more urban countries was that in rural
areas, permit requests already were being approved; hence it was in
the urban areas that the number of permitted concealed handguns
increased the most."

- John Lott, MORE GUNS, LESS CRIME, p. 131

3) Errors
in Characterizing Right-to-Carry Laws

I relied on a paper published in the Tennessee Law
Review (Spring 1995) by Clayton Cramer and David Kopel to determine
when different states adopted shall issue laws. A separate Nexis data
base search was also conducted to determine the exact date of
adoption.

Because of different interpretations over whether
a particular law constituted a shall issue law, the results were
tested to see whether defining Maine and Virginia as shall issue
states made a difference and it did not (in the original paper see p.
12, fn. 34 and p. 19, fn. 49 and in my book see p. 201, fn.
5).

In any case, I agree with Cramer and Kopel's
classification of state laws. Virginia's 1988 law explicitly uses the
term "shall-issue," and, with the exception of three counties, the
state followed that rule.

4)
Inclusion of Inappropriate Variables in the Analysis

The only variable that Webster mentions is the
arrest rate.

"The simplest point to make, however, is that
excluding the arrest rate does not alter the findings regarding
concealed handguns. Reestimating the regressions in tables 4.1 and
4.3 for the same samples and control variables produces virtually
identical results. Ironically, two of my strongest critics, Dan Black
and Dan Nagin, also tried excluding the arrest rates, and they
admitted in early drafts of their paper that their results agreed
with ours: ´The inclusion of the arrest-rate variable has very
little impact on the coefficient estimates of the right-to-carry
laws.'"

- John Lott, MORE GUNS, LESS CRIME, p. 146

5)
Interstate Variability in
Estimating Right-to-Carry Effects and Sensitivity to the Inclusion of
Single States

The Black and Nagin paper excludes Florida after
they have already excluded the 86 percent of the counties with
populations fewer than 100,000. Eliminating Florida as well as
counties with fewer than 100,0000 does eliminate the significance in
the one particular type of specification that they report for a
couple of crimes, but the vast majority of estimates were unaffected
from this extreme data mining and they ignore that doing this
actually strengthens some of the results.

In my book I write:

"This particular suggestion--that we should throw
out the data for Florida because the drop in violent crimes is so
large that it affects the results-- is very ironic. Handgun Control,
Inc. and other gun-control groups continue, as of this writing, to
cite the 1995 University of Maryland study, which claimed that if
evidence existed of a detrimental impact of concealed hand- guns, it
was for Florida. If the Maryland study is to be believed, the
inclusion of Florida must have biased my results in the opposite
direction.

"...

"While Black's & Nagin's explanations for
dropping Florida from the data set are invalid, there is some
justification for concern that results are being driven by a few
unusual observations. Figure 7.7 shows the relationship between
violent-crime rates and concealed-handgun laws when Florida is
excluded. A careful comparison of this graph with that of figure 4.5,
which includes Florida, reveals only a few very small
differences.

"As a more systematic response to this concern, I
excluded Florida and reestimated all the regressions shown in this
book. Indeed, there were eight regressions out of the more than one
thousand discussed in which the exclusion of Florida did cause the
coefficient for the nondiscretionary variable to lose its statistical
significance, although it remained negative. The rest of the
regression estimates either remained unchanged or (especially for
aggravated assault and robbery) became larger and more statistically
significant."

- John Lott, MORE GUNS, LESS CRIME, pp.
140-141

Webster states that Florida's decline in violent
crime is due to other factors besides its right-to-carry law, such as
"mandatory background checks and waiting periods for handgun
purchases," "other criminal justice interventions," & "maturation
of Florida's crack cocaine markets." In my book I wrote:

"The claim that Florida should be removed from the
data because a waiting period and a background check went into effect
in 1992 is even weaker. If this were a valid reason for exclusion,
why not exclude other states with these laws as well? Why only remove
Florida? seventeen other states had waiting periods in 1992. A more
valid response would be to try to account for the impact of these
other laws--as I did in chapter 4. Indeed, accounting for these other
laws slightly strengthens the evidence that concealed handguns deter
crime.

"The graph for Florida in figure 7.6 produces
other interesting results. The murder rate declined in each
consecutive year following the implementation of the
concealed-handgun law until 1992, the first year that these other,
much-touted, gun-control laws went into effect. I am not claiming
that these laws caused murder rates to rise, but this graph surely
makes it more difficult to argue that laws restricting the ability of
law-abiding citizens to obtain guns would reduce crime."

- John Lott, MORE GUNS, LESS CRIME, pp.
139-140

As to drug problems explaining crime rates, I
control for illegal drug prices in my regressions.

With respect to Webster's discussion of the
increase in crime in West Virginia, I write:

"Unfortunately, Black's and Nagin's evidence was
not based on statewide crime rates but on the crime rates for
counties with over 100,000 people. This fact is important, for
instance, in West Virginia, where it means that only one single
county - Kanawha - was examined. The other fifty-four counties in
West Virginia, which include 89 percent of the state's population,
were excluded from their estimates. They used only one county for
three of the ten states, and only three counties for another state.
In fact, Black and Nagin managed to eliminate 85 percent of all
counties in the nation in their analysis.

"As shown in table 4.9 (see chapter 4), my
estimates using all the counties certainly did not yield
´wildly' different estimates across states. Violent- crime rates
fell in nine of the ten states enacting new nondiscretionary
concealed handgun laws between 1977 and 1992. The differences that
did exist across states can be explained by differences in the rates
at which concealed- handgun permits were issued. Table 4.10 also
provides evidence that the states that issued more permits
experienced greater reductions in crime."

- John Lott, MORE GUNS, LESS CRIME, pp.
142-143

6)
Following Black and Nagin,
Webster states that my "models failed standard tests of statistical
adequacy for each of the categories of crime."

If you can please point to the relevant discussion
in the Black and Nagin article (Journal of Legal Studies, January
1998, Vol. 27), I would be happy to respond.

7) Lott and
Mustard's findings depart from well established facts about
crime

a) The
impact should be greatest for robbery

"First, as anyone who has carefully read this book
will know, it is simply not true that the results show "little or no
effect on robbery rates." Whether the effect was greater for robbery
or other violent crimes depends on whether one simply compares the
mean crime rates before and after the laws (in which case the effect
is relatively small for robbery) or compares the slopes before and
after the law (in which case the effect for robbery is the largest).
"Second, it is not clear that robbery should exhibit the largest
impacts primarily because `robbery' encompasses many crimes that are
not street robberies. For instance, we do not expect bank or
residential robberies to decrease, and, in fact, they could even
rise. Allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns makes
street robberies more difficult, and thus may make other crimes like
residential robbery relatively more attractive. Yet, not only
is it possible that these two different components of robbery move in
opposite directions, but to rank some of these different crimes one
requires information on how sensitive different types of criminals
are to the increased threat.

- John Lott, MORE GUNS, LESS CRIME, pp.
133-134

b) The
implausibility of rapists switching to property crimes

My reply:

"No one believes that hard-core rapists who are
committing their crimes only for sexual gratification will turn into
auto thieves, though some thefts do involve aggravated assault, rape,
or murder. Indeed, 16 percent of murders in Chicago from 1990 to 1995
occurred in the process of a robbery. What is more likely to happen,
however, is that robbers will try to obtain money by other means such
as auto theft or larceny. Although it is not unusual for rape victims
to be robbed, the decline in rape most likely reflects the would-be
rapist's fear of being shot."

- John Lott, MORE GUNS, LESS CRIME, p.
134

c) "theft
is the motive for only a small fraction of the violent
crimes"?

My reply:

"I am also not completely clear on what Webster
means when he says that ´theft is the motive for only a small
fraction of violent crimes,' since robbery accounted for as much as
34 percent of all violent crimes committed during the sample between
1977 and 1992 (and this excludes robberies that were committed when
other more serious crimes like murder or rape occurred in connection
with the robbery)."

- John Lott, MORE GUNS, LESS CRIME, p.
134

d) "the
only hint of a decrease in murder rates" was enjoyed by those under
21 years of age, too young to get concealed-carry permits, thus
supposedlycasting doubt upon the claim
that concealed-carry laws are responsible for the decline.

My reply:

"As noted in chapter 4, I tested the hypothesis
that murder rates would be lower for adults than for adolescents
under nondiscretionary concealed- handgun laws, and reported the
results in the original paper. However, the results did not bear out
this possibility. Concealed-handgun laws reduce murder rates for both
adults and for adolescents. One explanation may simply be that young
people also benefited from the carrying of concealed handguns by
adults. Several plausible scenarios may explain this. First,
criminals may well tend to leave an area where law-abiding adults
carry concealed handguns, and since all age groups live in the same
neighborhood, this lowers crime rates for all population groups.
Second, when gun-carrying adults are physically present, they may be
able to protect some youngsters in threatening
situations."

- John Lott, MORE GUNS, LESS CRIME, p.
147

7) Subsequent research

a) Black and Nagin "compared crime rate trends two
to three years after RTC laws were enacted with rates two to three
years prior to enactment, they found no clear pattern in the result"
that concealed handgun laws reduced violent crime

My reply:

"A quick glance at figures 7.1 to 7.5, which plot
their results, will explain their findings. Generally, the pattern is
very similar to what we reported earlier. In addition, as crime is
rising right up until the law is adopted and falling thereafter, it
is not surprising that some values when the crime rate is going down
are equal to those when it was going up. It is the slopes of the
lines and not simply the levels that matter. But more generally, why
choose to compare only two or three years before and after to look at
changes created by the law. Why not use all the data
available?

- John Lott, MORE GUNS, LESS CRIME, pp.
135-138

b) Claim that Mustard and I did not control for
waiting periods as well as other gun laws.

This is simply false. I control for many different
types of gun laws in many different parts of both the original paper
as well as the book. Doing so actually tends to slightly strengthen
the results.

I believe that the other points made by Webster
about Black and Nagin's comment on my work are dealt with extremely
well by David Friedman's analysis on the debate.